Alex Rider is a teenage James Bond who carries his stock of
life-saving gadgetry camouflaged as Nintendo games and anti-pimple
ointment. And he finds spying a chore. He'd rather be at school,
polishing his five languages and working himself up to the prospect
of flirting with girls.

His lack of enthusiasm for the undercover life has worked well
for him so far. As the hero of Anthony Horowitz's series of novels
for young adults, he's attracted millions of fans.

And now he's hit the big screen - still sighing over the slog of
having to serve his country during school hours, but looking
slightly mollified by the ingenuity and expensiveness of the toys
he has been given to do it with.

He's also the most solemn person in sight because everyone else
in the film is playing it for laughs, and doing it with an inspired
silliness that makes up for a lot if you happen to be among those
who prefer their Bonds at Martini-drinking age.

The biggest bonus is the appearance of Bill Nighy as MI6
spymaster Mr Blunt. He's Alex's recruiter - his M, if you like -
and he's blunt by name and nature. With a battleship grey
complexion and a wardrobe of suits to match, he has a mirthless
snort of a laugh, a gimlet-eyed gaze and a robotic array of tics
and twitches that keep him in motion. Cast as his much saner
assistant, Sophie Okonedo keeps looking at him sideways, as if she
expects him to collapse at any moment in tangle of broken springs
and rusted engine parts.

Stephen Fry is only slightly less irascible as MI6's weapons
expert, Smithers, whose centre of operations is the basement of
Hamleys, the London toy store. But a note of light relief is
supplied by Alicia Silverstone as the Riders' youthful housekeeper,
while Ewan McGregor makes a brief but forceful appearance as Alex's
uncle, Ian, whose death during the opening stunt sequence
precipitates his nephew's debut as a spy.

For Ian was not the banker he pretended to be. He was an MI6
operative investigating a terrorist plot. And now that he's dead,
Alex is to take his place, whether he likes it or not. In Blunt's
firm view, this is what Ian would have wanted, having had his
nephew trained in foreign languages, martial arts, gymnastics,
scuba diving and every other sport known to humankind. The only
thing Alex doesn't do is drive a car. Presumably, this is because
the filmmakers don't want to set adolescent audiences a bad example
by showing a 14-year-old at the wheel of an Aston Martin - which is
fair enough, but the argument does diminish once you've seen the
traffic havoc he can cause with a pushbike.

He may be a reluctant hero, but he doesn't hang back. Played by
Alex Pettyfer, a patrician-looking 16-year-old who starred in
British television's Tom Brown's Schooldays, he sails
through each near-death encounter wearing an expression of mild
irritation, as if beset by a swarm of mosquitoes.

The chief pest is Mickey Rourke as a villainous American
computer billionaire, who grew up in England and is still
harbouring a grudge against the country for giving him such a
miserable childhood. With his ravaged, boxer's face, eerily
decorated with blue eye shadow, he looks satisfyingly weird and
seems to be enjoying himself hugely, as do Andy Serkis and Missi
Pyle as his similarly maladjusted sidekicks.

It all comes with spectacular stuntwork and the overall effect
is very smooth, if a little heartless. I know that we're thoroughly
accustomed to watching Bond blow people up and heave them over
cliffs while putting scores of innocent bystanders in harm's way,
but when a 14-year-old does the same with such nerveless aplomb,
it's sort of creepy.